Public Library Use and Services as of July 2018

A Fourth Update to ALA Library Fact Sheet 6

See the Third Update, Second Update, and the First Update.

Book Shelves and Computers (at the New York Public Library in 2011) By Alex Proimos from Sydney, Australia (Book Shelves and Computers at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Book_Shelves_and_Computers_(5914150081).jpg ) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

See the 2018 State of America’s Libraries: A Report from the American Library Association, released during National Library Week 2018 — especially the sections, Public Libraries, Issues and Trends, and National Issues and Trends.

In a press release dated April 23, 2018, IMLS Releases Annual Data and Survey Results of American Public Libraries, IMLS announced the Fiscal Year 2016 data was available, including the Supplementary Tables PDF. Still to come is the actual report, presumably to be named “Public Libraries in the United States Survey: Fiscal Year 2016”. The Supplementary Tables (PDF) of the Public Libraries Survey: Fiscal Year 2016 (April 2018) — which reported a slightly lower count of public libraries overall, from 9,068 administrative entities to 9,057 — reported 1.4 billion in-person visits to libraries, with a count slightly fewer than in the Fiscal Year 2015 (PDF) statistics on the October 2017 update. The number of registered borrowers/library card holders was lower at 171,311,000. And the number of public-access Internet computers was slightly lower at 294,216. But there were notable increases in the numbers attending public programs. There were approximately 113.1 million attendees to public…